imb

trump executive order

with the caveat that there's still FA to go, and the 82 game grind, injuries, playoff hotstreaks and matchups that leads to a mid Knicks team waking up and being unbeatable, etc its really hard to find a team in the spurs/okc tier, which is funny to say considering neither one of them won last year. In the east Pistons won 60 games with a flawed roster, so they won't repeat that, but they're dealing with the bigger issue of either having to pay Duren $50m a year to be bad in the playoffs or getting 25 cents on the dollar for him in trade. They're out Celtics won 56 games without Tatum by playing top 5 defense and letting Brown put up 30 shots a game. Now the bill comes due because Tatum is back and better than Brown, who is currently going insane after not winning MVP, losing in the first round while working Tatum back in, and then being floated in failed trade talks for giannis. They're out. Knicks - repeating is impossible. Out. Cavs - James Harden is on their team. Out. Raptors, Hawks, Sixers - good rosters with age, health or atlanta concers. Out Orland - Best player sucks. Out Hornets - played so well last year they decided they couldn't have lamelo in charge of their future. Out Heat - Giannis, Bam and some of your favorite g league stars of yesterday. Out. Bucks, Bulls, Nets, Wizards - I actually think the bulls and wizards have some fun parts but obviously out. Bucks and Nets are going to be god-tier ass. Pacers - Playoff risers two years ago, i could see them making some noise in the east if Haliburton is healthy at the end of the year, but Ivica Zubac is your third star. Our In the west Nuggets - roster is cooked. You have an all-time great in Jokic, but they havent gotten out of the second round in 3 years, everyone is older, murray and gordon (who i love) are injury prone and they've had to play Roster Tetris for three years in a row. Out. Lakers - Luka still has to prove he can A.) stay healthy and B.) make a team better. It's LA so Silver might say horsefeathers it and let them have 10 max contracts. But otherwise I fail to see how a team with Luka and AR as its two best players will ever defend enough to win a title. Out. Rockets - Lmao. Out. Wolves - team has a covid test, a paternity test and a driving test as its 3 best players. Hell no. Could not be more out on them. Same problem Denver has, they've gotten close 3 straight years, but 3 offseasons of "we can recreate him in the aggregate" is too much in the nba. All the way out. Blazers - lol. Out. Suns - Fun season last year where they really overperformed. Now they're jettisoning the culture guys who made it work in exchange for the nba's worst citizens. basketball gods will not approve. Out. Clippers - just traded kawhi lol. OKC owns their pick next year FYI. Out. Olden State Warriors - lol out Pelicans, Mavs, Grizzlies, Kings - lmao helllllll no Utah - like their coach and their roster but obviously not.

Well ill be honest, i havent paid attention to portland so i dont know how well-regarded he is. i was more reacting to how funny it was that the blazers owner was trying to pay splitter like $17.50 an hour, the entire league revolted against that on Splitter's behalf, and then he ends up with the notoriously cheap bulls instead. the perennial 11th seed bulls signing the coach whose owner didn't even want to pay him real american currency is so on brand

exactly. what agent in their right mind is telling their guys to go to chicago? hey they stink, they can't draft, they dont have a coach and the front office treats their jobs with the depth of an nba2k career sim.

the bulls are on an entirely different timeline than GSW. The warriors roster means they can only improve the team by taking risks on older, injury prone stars who don't mind sharing the spotlight with Steph. And even then they're still a 7-seed, so it's really just a retirement tour for steph and lebron. the bulls real problem is FA only go to the coasts anyway and the bulls have sucked for 30 years straight and they draft like dogshit. but other than that mrs lincoln how did you like the play

all panenkas all the time is the solution

you're confused why a team would be trying to add good players in free agency?

bucks did as good as they could. its hard to move a max guy, let alone a top 5 max guy, because you might realistically only have 2-3 teams who make any sense as a trade partner anyway, and that's not even considering how hard it is to trade a salary like that. miami still looks like a 7-10 seed to me, and that's ignoring Giannis' calf that keeps barking. From the heat's perspective, you can either be middling with giannis or be middling without him, so you might as well sell a bunch of jerseys. Him and Bam are kinda roughly on the same career timeline, so if giannis blows an achilles or whatever, I guess you just move bam for a pick or 2 and then go full-tank (as full-tank as you can in the new cba) anyway i guess my take is that the bucks did probably as good as they could, and miami was fake anyway. the most interesting thing from the trade is learning in real-time that star salaries have gotten so bonkers that its much more valuable to trade a mid-level star like desmond bane or mikal bridges than giannis, because you have to eat 50 cents on the dollar to move a future $60m guy

they were playing a team from texas, man

79-3 is my best so far

that bottom 3 is too funny. one guy who can't shoot and two guys who get put in action every single time they're on defense

lmao

his tangible skills might be the best ever. But his intagible skills might also be the best ever. It's really crazy. He's shohei on steroids in a sport where 1 guy can make you a championship contender. When you start thinking about what his next decade is going to look like, a fun exercise is to imagine how easy it is to put a comptetent team around him (easiest ever) and how difficult it is to conceptulize a way to slow him down (toughest ever.) Pretty scary concept. It's really just his outlier size working, potentially, against him and i really dont want it to get him. I wanna see how far he can push things

I think Wemby is, or will be very soon, the best player in the world (and eventually ever as long as he stays healthy.) But it is funny to see how much better he is against OKC than everyone else. Part of that is that he's just such an awesome competitor and he turns it up against OKC. But he's also just so uniquely built to frustrate us. He shuts the paint down so you dont have to help and we have no open 3s. We have no one big enough to wear him down physically. He's incredible. I dont even know what to say. I can't even bad faith an argument against him.

the mathis stuff seems pretty simple. He's 22 and he's in A-ball. He's the same age as Kurtz, Caglianone, Sal Stewart, Caminero, etc. If he's an actual prospect and a good hitter, he should be mashing without striking out. Kurtz is obv a different level prospect, but he's the same position and the same age. When he was 22, he also had a good walk rate and a 30 percent strikeout rate. He was just doing in the MLB, hitting .290 with 35 bombs. Cags was striking out 20 percent of the time in AA and he can't make contact in the majors.

the bulls are really a mess. they finally miss the play-in and their reward is (likely) landing in the worst spot in the draft. too low to get a blue chip, but too high (and you're too bad) to take some older college junior role-player. if you end up at 9 or 10 just trade the pick, let billy go (he will not do a rebuild) and crash out next season. I like Buzelis and Giddey but they aren't even championship building blocks, so if a tank year costs you them too, well ... ok fine

it's actually spelled caroline anyway

i like the way the ball sounds of ballesteros bat

cade horton was holding the offense back it seems

3 weeks ago i would have told you i had no faith in matthew boyd and cade horton to be good and/or make it to the ASB and I still would have said this is an 88-win playoff team. there is plenty of middling pitching languishing around, the cubs' 2026 has rested and still rests on the defense (elite) and the bats (TO BE DETERMINED) im not trying to be an optimist, because i hate this team franchise and front office, but i think we're fine.

there's probably the same likelihood that steele is done as a relevant pitcher than there is that he comes back and posts a sub-4 era this year

good, maybe jed will stop trying to stock our rotation with soft-tossers now that he knows they just get hurt like the flamethrowers anyway get. real. horsefeathers. pitchers. please.

we have very different definitions of the word perfect

quickest way around the bad word filter

where is tom gonna find 1.5 million dollars